


and i can never be ignored

by postcardmystery



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Blood, Knifeplay, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, S&M, Self-Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:48:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year and a half in, Darren laughs in Caryl Churchill’s face and Geoffrey burns her notes in the sink of their dilapidated, shabby high rise.</p><p>“Fucking tourist,” says Darren, with great finality, smoke drifting about his head and bruises from Geoffrey’s fingertips about his waist.</p><p>An AU where Geoffrey never goes to New Burbage, but chooses to rip Europe apart with Darren, instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i can never be ignored

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for state violence, police brutality, mental illness, suicide, self-harm, and the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

“New Burbage want me,” says Geoffrey, twenty two and glorious and hands shaking all night long, and Darren shrugs, says, “I’m not particularly into begging.”

“Scandalous lies,” says Geoffrey, and Darren shrugs again, shoulders slim and tight beneath a velvet coat, says, “Stay, then. We’ll starve, of course.”

“You could do with some weight loss, after all,” says Geoffrey, fingers closing around Darren’s bird-thin wrist, and no one asked, no one answered, but the contract’s signed in blood, all the same.

 

 

They’re a company of two, for a time, lighting director paid in ramen, knees skinned in rehearsal and fight training put to the test in the bedroom. There’s experimental and then there’s just plain  _crazy_ , and they skirt the line, skirt the line, keep pushing and fucking and fighting and then—

“They want us in Berlin,” says Darren, and Geoffrey answers with his legendary grin.

 

 

“Which one of you’s the director?” says the lead. He’s old and self-important, and Müller thought he walked on water. But Müller’s dead, and the Wall has fallen. This is a new Berlin, a new theatre, a new  _vendetta_.

“He is,” they both say, and their smiles are identically nasty.

 

 

Their first staging is controversial but not incendiary, the second crosses a line, but not the legal one.

The third—

“Get your fucking hands  _off_  me,” says Darren, as loudly and theatrically as possible, winks stage left, gives Geoffrey enough time to do a runner.

 

 

“I had to tell them I was your brother,” says Geoffrey, prosaically, and Darren rubs at his black eye, says, “Thank Christ they didn’t strip search me, then.”

“Oh, fuck off,” says Geoffrey, and Darren pulls his scarf tighter, snarls, “Well, I’m not the one with the predilection for  _knives_ , am I, darling?”

Geoffrey raises an eyebrow to indicate  _exactly_  how true he thinks that is, and Darren drags his leather gloves out of Geoffrey’s (battered) coat pocket, says, “Where won’t give even the tiniest of shits that I’m technically on bail and gone AWOL?”

“Belarus?” says Geoffrey, innocently, as if he has no idea what he’s doing, and Darren grins, his own sort of madness in his eyes, says, “Oh, you decadent  _bastard_.”

“I think you have us confused again,” says Geoffrey, and only scratches Darren’s neck a little when leather gloves reach out to steal his cigarette.

 

 

They end up in Bucharest, a first stop on a long, long journey of chaos and destruction. They get arrested, they get beaten, Geoffrey gets a scar through his eyebrow about an inch long and Darren’s nose is broken and sets the right kind of wrong. They preach hellfire and damnation and Baudrillard, fuck everywhere they shouldn’t, because they shouldn’t be fucking anywhere at all. It’s the opposite of freedom and on the nights the city burns, they hold hands and drink cheap vodka and wait for the inevitable; wait for the status quo to come down around them like the house of blood-money cards they know it to be.

A year and a half in, Darren laughs in Caryl Churchill’s face and Geoffrey burns her notes in the sink of their dilapidated, shabby high rise.

“Fucking  _tourist_ ,” says Darren, with great finality, smoke drifting about his head and bruises from Geoffrey’s fingertips about his waist.

“She thought she was writing a revolution,” says Geoffrey, his eyes distant, and Darren passes him the cigarette, pausing to flick ash contemptuously onto the curling paper, says, “Shows what that bitch knows.”

 

 

They end up in London, because it’s London or disappearing in the night without trace. 

“What do you think, Geoffrey?” says Darren, cigarette burns at his wrists and his hair shorn short, “Shall we call Kushner and beg him to give us a job?”

“Have you gone insane?” says Geoffrey, throwing Darren’s copy of  _Drums in the Night_  off their bed with an eloquent flick of his wrist, “We made the international news.  _He’ll_  be begging  _us_.”

 

 

He does.

 

 

It comes in waves and spurts and starts and the circling of the drain of life: a Russian Hamlet, a pardon from Berlin, three years in France, Darren on picket-lines and loved like he’s Caesar, Geoffrey tossing cigarettes in the Seine and developing an addiction to Parisian coffee. Neighbours phoning the cops at three in the morning and blood on the floor of their  _very_  expensive apartment. They fuck and they fight and the lines blur and blur and blur, and before they know it they’re twenty nine and—

Darren knows he didn’t mean to do it. But he did it all the same, and Darren commits him, kisses him, always knew this was coming.

 

 

“What the fuck are you doing here,” says Geoffrey, flat and terrible, a band around his wrist and stitches up and down his arms like train tracks, and Darren wrinkles his nose, lights his cigarette, says, “We, darling, are going home.”

 

 

They spend precisely three weeks in New Burbage.

Geoffrey pisses in Oliver Welles’s office, and laughs until he’s sick when he gets caught. Darren sets the stage on fire, and does not even pretend to be apologetic.

“I don’t care what you did in fucking Europe,” says Oliver, his voice tight with fury, “You can’t do that here!”

“Oh,  _darling_ ,” says Darren, Geoffrey silent and malicious at his shoulder, “Don’t be so  _petit bourgeoisie_.”

“I staged  _The Bacchae_  in New York in 1969,” says Oliver, white with fury, “You two don’t even know you’re born! I’ve been doing this since before you were damn well  _breathing_.”

“And?” says Geoffrey, and swallows a lithium tablet, lights Darren’s cigarette, does not even deign Oliver with eye contact.

“Explicit political context to our plays,” says Darren, “Or we’re gone.”

“Personally, I am hoping for gone,” says Geoffrey, and Darren blows out a long plume of smoke, says, “Darling, that happened years ago.”

 

 

Home isn’t home any more, the world smaller and madder and dizzy. They go back to where they started, a small, dark theatre in downtown Toronto, found a company, stage a  _Richard II_  so explicitly homoerotic they know it’s got maybe one performance in it at best.

“Geoffrey, darling,” says Darren, smirking, “I think the mob is here.”

“Excellent,” says Geoffrey, “Where did we put this handcuffs?”

“Look under the bed,” says Darren, “I think we can do better than that, don’t you?”

“Pervert,” says Geoffrey, his grin like wildfire, and Darren sneers right back at him, says, “Thespian.”

“What?” says Geoffrey, darkly bemused, and Darren kicks open the box they keep under their bed, says, “I thought we were stating things that were simply fucking  _true_ , was I wrong?”

“Always,” says Geoffrey, lips pulled back, and Darren rolls up his sleeves, says, “Fuck off, there’s a good boy. Ready to start a revolution?”

Geoffrey holds up the keys, bites Darren until both their lips are bleeding, whispers into his ear, “ _If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all._ ”

“Fucking melodramatic asshole,” says Darren, and only shivers a little when the chains pull tight around his wrist.

 

 

“On this charge, what do the defendants plead?”

“Art,” says Darren, his mouth dangerously close to Geoffrey’s neck, “What else matters?”


End file.
